So it was a pleasant surprise to get a call from the U.S based travel site 'Airbnb.com' to document the Walworth Road in central London. The assignment was to show the everyday life of the area, warts and all, to give travellers an idea of what to expect when they get there.
The Walworth Road stretches from Camberwell Green to the busy roundabout at Elephant and Castle (so called after a pub that was, and still is, there - hence you'll often hear it referred to locally as 'the' Elephant and Castle).
It's also an area I know very well since during my studies I would travel daily along the Walworth Road from my flat in Elephant down to University at Camberwell College of the Arts and I've got a lot of fond memories of the place.
Populated by working class Londoners it does have something of a bad reputation but it's definitely a 'real' part of the city - what you see is what you get and as I'm sure any local will tell you if you don't like it you can go to another part of town, they won't be bothered. With so much of the city changing it was very reassuring to see that this part of London seemed to have remained exactly the same since I'd last frequented it over a decade ago.
The wig shops, fruit stalls, bespoke tailors, crumbling shopping centre, faded paint work and adopted butchers cat all served to remind me that thankfully some parts of London seem destined not to change
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